Something of an alternative to those suggestions from days of old and from fields far distant: cast the net closer to home; perhaps get a dinkum flavour of the local scene via Poor Fellow My Country (Xavier Herbert), The Great Extermination (edited by Jock Marshall), After the Greening (Mary White).

Better yet, make it compulsory for everyone to do an Arts degree before they start studying finance, law, science, business, or any other vocational qualification. That way people will be able to avoid the awful realisation that they have wasted half their lives chasing the illusory state known as "wealth", on inevitably discovering literature post-midlife crisis.

Without doubt, your life and that of your friend has been immeasurably enriched by your reading odyssey.

It must have taken a great deal of effort and perseverance because language has changed a great deal over the centuries but not the human condition which, alack, has, in my opinion, deteriorated!

Would it be that the school curriculum included many of the books and authors you mentioned. Students might leave school able to think rather than being incredibly proficient in rote learning.

But that would require teachers who could think and there aren't many of them in the 'education' system!

Do an Arts Degree at a dumbed down Australian University?

Really Sam Janwich! Your leftie beliefs and their absolute incorrectness (I'm being nice here) are on display ... again ...sigh.

My comprehension of the above article was the exact opposite.

Get your professional qualification, trade or life experience so you have the money and time to allow you to then embark on the adventure of educating yourself of the human condition through reading ... the classics and joining in the Great Conversation.

David G,

'It must have taken a great deal of effort and perseverance...'

I found it not difficult to read the classics. My experience was they were simply written and easily understood. Admittedly some weren't but most are and that is probably one of the reasons why they are classics.

I can remember one of my friends, who had also read many classics,
saying 'basic truths are quite simple and never change'. I, from that point on, found my reading much easier. And my youngish editor is currently improving my expression.

As if we didn't have enough morons already !

Make arts degrees compulsory sandwich, you've got to be kidding. Make them illegal would be a better idea.

There is nothing more ridiculous than wasting a young life reading about a make believe life. Even reading about a real one, excerpt in a study of history is bad enough.

For god sake, kick the kids out of the nest, & tell them to go experience life, not read about it.

There would be a very good reason to require all applicants for a university course to produce 2 years of tax returns, proving they had been self sufficient for at least that period. This would have to be in employment other than provided by family.

At least then they would have some idea of what they were doing. If I had known that engineers end up sitting at a desk, shuffling paper, or today swapping screens, I would never have wasted all that time.

Ross I think it is a better idea to buy all the books you want to read some time, & carefully save them for the day when a cyclone is rattling the windows, the power is out, thus no internet or TV, & you need something really absorbing to insulate you from the fear. Now that is really putting the things to work.

I did some pretty serious reading when alone crossing a large chunk of ocean, or anchored miles from the nearest source of intelligent conversation. The Ant World was one I found quite riveting, once I got into it.

Well, Ross, you may feel ever so enriched by your extensive readings of the classics. However, your list is entirely limited to male authors. In the tradition of earlier times, women had almost no public literary or artistic voice with which they could reflect on their own experiences.

This is the big failing of the classics, in that they reflect the 'human condition', but only through the eyes of one half of humanity.

Kilarney, who wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'? If more women writers had contributed classical works I'd have read them too.

'However, your list is entirely limited to male authors. In the tradition of earlier times, women had almost no public literary or artistic voice with which they could reflect on their own experiences.

This is the big failing of the classics, in that they reflect the 'human condition', but only through the eyes of one half of humanity.'

It is not our fault that this has occurred. Harriet Beecher Stowe refutes your inference understanding the human condition is different for men and women. It isn't. The quality of her work is timeless and genderless. Classical literature is mostly genderless in it's lessons. They apply to all humanity not just to men or to women

If traditions don't change in the future then that will be the responsibility of all of us and of the women writers who fail to write to the standard of Stowe and of the classics.

'(Johnson's) advice to be content with being discontent and relish the feeling on an unfulfilled desire as more enjoyable than its satisfaction...'

Such has been the way of the world for generations past. As it was and is the desire of many of those who question the inequalities and inequities of their times in their desire to achieve change.

Such has occurred with women's equality. Equality that has began to be achieved throughout the last two centuries. Stowe was part of that. It continues today. Those facts enhance the value of the classics. They don't diminish them.

There was a time when only the works of the ancient Greeks were seen as classical. That changed as humanity grew in understanding and intellect and realised no one group, whether by class, education or nationality held all truth. Women are another group. It is w9idely accepted women do hold some of the truth. It is correct to say women have not traditionally contributed to the great conversation, but equally it is true to say they now have an increased and equal opportunity to contribute.